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Originally Posted by KBlanke
Rich,
Too bad that you choose not to participate with Cruisin' Corvettes in Tallahassee, they are a good bunch of people. The invitation to participate has always been open whether you had a newsletter, name badge, etc. or not.
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That may very well be true, but I certainly was not made to feel welcome by the "powers that be" there. I felt that my wife and I would be infringing on their good will be taking advantage of the club offerings and social events without first becoming paid members.
First off, let me copy that last email I got from the club prez here concerning my offer of resolving the problem:
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I am responding to your disappointment in Cruisin' Corvettes. We are all human and we do make mistakes. My personal apologies that your membership application somehow got missed. Our club is going through growing pains and many changes. During the time your membership was sent in (I believe was November 2005?), the individual responsible for notifying me of new members had sold their Corvette and was losing interest in the club. This is one of the reasons I encourage our members to participate in club events to get to know other members so that they can vote in members who are truly interested in what is best for the club and it's members. We have good people representing our Club and I am proud of each and every one of them as I am of our Club. I personally want you to know that we have not had and do not have a grudge with you, nor do we have a hatchet to bury. We are simply a Corvette Club that enjoys good times and spending time with others who have the same love for the Corvette. Myself and the other officers were together this weekend at one of the many fun Corvette events and we took the privilege to discuss your dilemma and decided that it would not be fair to the other members to give you a full years membership, but are offering joint membership for the cost of an individual membership. Our officers work as a team and are very considerate of the best interest of our club members and therefore, do no go out on their own and make these decisions. If you would like to give us another try, I certainly encourage it as we are getting new members monthly and they come with new ideas that only make our club that much better. If you do have a change of heart, you may complete the application on our website and mail it in. I don't think that you will be disappointed.
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My "olive branch" offering to them was to just forget the past screw ups they did with my application and instead of my paying to be a member now and lose 5 months (their memberships run January 1 to December 31), I asked the prez to extend my membership for another year, effectively ending December 31, 2007. That offer was declined. Kind of penny wise and dollar foolish, if you ask me. Not to mention the ill-will now generated. Now the interesting thing is analyzing the financial "hardship" they would have endured by granting my request, but it is first necessary to view this from their membership application:
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Dues:
Dues run from January to December, regardless of Date of Membership, unless you join (not renew) in October, November or December; then dues are paid for the following year as well.
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OK, so it was early May when I made this request, and I originally sent in my application at the end of November, 2005, so my original membership should have been valid roughly from December 1, 2005 thru December 31, 2006. So all total, their accepting this "olive branch" would have cost the club a whopping 6 months of my dues ($17.50 since my wife and I were joining jointly), figuring I COULD wait and sign up in October, 2006 which would make my membership valid from October, 2006 thru December 31, 2007 anyway. So in effect, the only issue at this point is the 6 months from May thru October 1. As you can read in that reply copied above, the prez did offer me a joint membership for the price of a single membership. That's a difference in price of $10.00. So subtracting that difference from the 6 months freebie membership I asked for and we come up with the burdensome total of $7.50 I would have been cheating the membership. That's the "penny" part of the equation. The "dollar" part is that I most likely would have been a paying member for as long as I owned a Corvette. What is that typically? 5 years? 10 years? So to save the club membership from my taking advantage of them and "not being fair to the other members" for that $7.50 difference, they lost a potential $175 to $350 over the life of my likely membership. Not a wise business decision, in my opinion.
Sorry, but no, I interpreted that as simply snubbing me, since the math just didn't make sense.
But that is their problem. Maybe when there is a changing of the guard, I will consider joining, but at this point, I believe the officers of that club have some issues that need to get straightened out in their own minds.
